1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to foot pedals for drums, in particular, bass drums, which are beaten by beaters interlocked with foot boards when depressed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Foot pedals are normally used for playing bass drums and are operated by users (or operators) who depress foot boards (or pedals) with their feet, thus rotatably moving beaters (or mallets) to beat drumheads of bass drums. Specifically, a beater rod is attached to a rotation shaft of the foot board via a rocker, so that when the foot board is depressed by an operator's foot, a beater attached to the tip end of the beater rod is rotatably moved to beat the bass drum. Herein, the beater rod is inserted into a rod insertion hole of the rocker, so that the beater rod is pressed and fixed to the wall of the rod insertion hole using a fixing bolt, for example. Various types of foot pedals have been disclosed in Japanese Examined Utility-Model Publication No. Sho 55-45433, Japanese Examined Utility-Model Publication No. Sho 58-43035, and Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei 8-314447, for example.
If the beater rod is not properly fixed to the rocker, the beater must be shifted in position so that a beating portion of the beater for actually beating the drumhead of a bass drum is correspondingly changed, or the contact area between the beater and drumhead must be varied to cause unwanted variations of sounds when playing the bass drum. Therefore, it is required to properly fix the beater rod to the rocker in such a way that the direction of the beater (in other words, the beating portion of the beater) is normally fixed in a prescribed positional relationship with the drumhead of the bass drum. Conventionally, the user (or operator) fixes the beater rod to the rocker and manually adjusts them with visual confirmation as to whether the beating portion of the beater is properly brought into contact with the drumhead upon depression of the foot board. That is, the operator is required to perform such troublesome and complicated manual operations in fixing and adjusting the beater rod to the rocker while visually confirming positional relationship therebetween before playing the bass drum with the foot pedal. This may easily cause occurrence of error in fixing the beater rod to the rocker when the operator makes visual confirmation in a slanted direction.
The aforementioned problem may be solved by adapting a specific structural design realizing avoidance of axial rotation of the beater rod. That is, as shown in FIG. 4, a fixing member B shaped like a hexahedron is screwed to the base portion of a beater rod A, and it is brought into contact with a prescribed (step) difference D of a rocker C, thus avoiding unwanted axial rotation of the beater rod A.
In the aforementioned structural design, the fixing member B is merely brought into contact with the difference D of the rocker C. In other words, it lacks a function for firmly fixing the fixing member B to the rocker C. Therefore, there still remains a possibility that a beater E may be easily changed in the direction thereof when the beater rod A is unexpectedly rotated while the user plays the bass drum with the foot pedal.
Due to the provision of the difference D, it is possible to reduce axial rotation of the beater rod A, so that the operator can easily fix the beater rod A to the rocker C when assembling the foot pedal. However, when the operator tightly screws them together, the beater rod A should be pressed and brought into linear or area contact with the interior wall of the rod insertion hole of the rocker C in its entire length, so that the fixing member B is correspondingly moved in a direction to leave from the difference D of the rocker C. This causes an unwanted gap to be formed between the fixing member B and the difference D of the rocker C. For this reason, it is difficult to normally secure a prescribed gap (or a prescribed positional relationship) between the fixing member B and the difference D of the rocker C. In other words, it is difficult to normally fix a prescribed direction for the beater E relatively to the drumhead; that is, it is very difficult to accurately establish prescribed positioning with respect to the direction of the beater E.
In addition, the beater rod A is fixed in the rod insertion hole of the rocker C by using a screw, wherein due to insufficient fixation for holding the beater rod A together with the rocker C, the beater rod A may be changed in the direction thereof during the play of a bass drum, or the beater rod A may be unexpectedly extracted from the rod insertion hole of the rocker C.